Sunset at Tarrant Keyneston

On this particular evening, I wanted to try and capture something in or around Wimborne.  The sky wasn't looking too promising - there was a lot of cloud near the horizon which tends to mean that as the sun gets close to setting it is obscured and the lighting goes very dull and uninteresting.  But I have learnt a few things over the years, and knowing that (a) conditions change, (b) I love being outside with the camera, and (c) if you don't try you won't get anything got me out!

Tarrant Keyneston Sunset I

I drove through Wimborne the long way around, but I really wasn't seeing anything that grabbed me.  I wasn't looking for anything in particular (and that might have been part of the problem), but was hoping something would just jump out at me.  In the end, I gave up in Wimborne and headed out of town, past Kingston Lacy and along the famous tree-lined road past Badbury Rings.  The lighting wasn't very good along here - too much cloud to get any direct shadows across the road, and just a general dullness which wasn't going to lead to a decent picture, but once I got out from the end of the trees the sky had seemed to come alive with clouds and gained some real interest.

Tarrant Keyneston Sunset II

I pulled over into a the entry road to a couple of fields, parked up and got out with my tripod, camera, cable release and filters.  As the sun was getting closer to the horizon, the detail in the sky started picking up even more.  I walked into the field and carefully manoeuvred around the edge to a position which captured the colour of a distant field without getting the road next to me in the shot, and took some shots.

The shots I've selected here were the best from the evening.  All were taken with the 17-40L and 0.6ND grad to keep detail in both the foreground and the sky.  I made a deliberate choice to shoot in both portrait and landscape as I'm starting to focus work to be flexible for publication, and the requirement can be dependant on the use (e.g. a double page spread will probably want a landscape, while a front cover is typically portrait).  It seems sensible that if you are faced with a scene that may be of use, you should try and capture it in both formats.

This last shot is slightly different in that I zoomed the lens.  I generally take landscape shots towards the wide end of the 17-40L, but have recently been thinking about using longer telephoto zooms to take landscape shots, particularly for isolating certain areas of a landscape.  As I only had the 17-40L with me, this shot was taken at 40mm and just brings out some more of the detail in the middle ground.  It's made me think, and on recent landscape shoots I've been taking my 120-400OS with me too (I've chosen this over the 70-200 f4L IS as the 120-400OS has a 77mm thread so I can use my single Lee adapter ring on this lens to allow use of ND grads).

Tarrant Keyneston Sunset III

I haven't yet had a chance to shoot any landscapes with the 120-400OS - the weather seems to have turned recently and my life has got incredibly busy too, so I've had less chance for photography.  I'm hoping this coming week will see a change to that, though!